10 reasons to watch UFC Fight Night 29

After two weeks of relative tranquility, the UFC machine rolls on with UFC Fight Night 29, which takes place Wednesday at Jose Correa Arena in Barueri, Sao Paulo, Brazil. The event’s main card airs live on FOX Sports 1, as does the preliminary-card. All in all, we’re looking at a five-hour block of fights.

As with many “Fight Night” cards, most of the matchups aren’t immediately relevant to their respective divisions, but instead offer a night of combat diversion. And there are plenty of those headed to Brazil after the promotion announced a baker’s dozen of events for next year.

Headliners Jake Shields and Demian Maia are top-tier welterweights on the road back to gold. For the former, it’s his chance to get another shot at champ Georges St-Pierre, to whom he lost in 2011. The latter has reinvented himself as a 170-pound fighter and hopes to have better luck against the French-Canadian (or Johny Hendricks, if the belt changes hands in November) than he did at middleweight against Anderson Silva.

Right now, there’s a queue forming to meet the winner of St-Pierre vs. Hendricks. Matt Brown is in the mix if he can beat Carlos Condit, and Rory MacDonald and Robbie Lawler lie in wait, as well. All of the contenders fall short of Maia’s world-class jiu-jitsu, of course. The question is whether that means anything as the air gets thinner at the top of the division.

There are at least four other welterweights on the card still scrambling up the mountain, so it should be a fun night.

Here are 10 reasons to watch UFC Fight Night 29:

1) A good jiu-jitsu scrap. Sure, Maia (18-4 MMA, 12-4 UFC) and Shields (28-6-1 MMA, 3-2 UFC) are years removed from their days as grapplers who are so good at their specialty that they trump more well-rounded fighters. In other words, the welterweights have plenty of kicks and punches to go along with their chokes. No one is exactly calling to see a showdown between Shields’ “American Jiu-Jitsu” and Maia’s updated take on the traditional stuff, but given the card’s lower status in the pecking order of UFC events, it’s an intrigue worth tuning in for. Now, all they’ve got to do is hit the mat.

2) Is Maia ready for the title shot? Even UFC President Dana White is measuring his hyperbole when it comes to the stakes of the main event, calling it a “big fight” that will place the winner in a “good position in that weight division.” Not exactly a guaranteed title shot, and from what we’ve seen of both fighters, the idea of them capturing the welterweight belt is a bit of a stretch. For Shields, it’s a case of history, as he was, in fact, dominated by champ Georges St-Pierre when they met two years ago. For Maia, it’s more plausible, though it’s hard to imagine he’ll be able to keep St-Pierre’s back as he did former UFC fighter Jon Fitch. But with a strong performance, the winner could nonetheless go in the No. 3 or No. 4 spot in the packed division.

3) A classic matchup for the welterweight pecking order. 170-pound fighters Dong Hyun Kim (17-2-1 MMA, 8-2 UFC) and Erick Silva (15-3 MMA, 3-2 UFC) are even farther back in the welterweight line, but their matchup is far from irrelevant. Kim is 8-2 in the division with losses only to headliner Maia and onetime title challenger Carlos Condit. A win over Silva, who lost gobs of luster when Jon Fitch ground him out this past year, might be the entry point to another marquee opponent. Silva, meanwhile, still has the “it” factor and just needs a few impressive wins to jump into the title picture. It’s vet vs. young blood here.

4) Should Hamill have stayed home? It’s rare when a trainer breaks from his camp’s ranks and says anything that’s not blatantly self-serving, and it’s almost unheard of in MMA when one of them flat out protests his own fighter’s career. But that’s where we are with Matt Hamill (11-4 MMA, 10-4 UFC), a deaf fighter who found great success in the light heavyweight division despite a serious deficiency. Hamill retired in 2011, but couldn’t stay away and returned a year later. To put it lightly, he’s been a shell of himself since, and against a heavy-hitter like Thiago Silva (15-3 MMA, 6-3 UFC), you can’t help but be worried. That’s exactly the disposition of his longtime trainer, Duff Holmes, who went on “Inside MMA” to say flat-out that he refused to help Hamill prepare for the fight. Whether his concerns were valid, or he’s just a little too protective, we’ll see on Wedesday.

5) Concussion junction. Light heavyweights Fabio Maldonado (19-6 MMA, 2-3 UFC) and Joey Beltran (14-8 MMA, 4-5 UFC) are known for two things: heavy hands and hard heads. These traits guarantee a violence-filled affair, at least on paper. Maldonado is barely removed from a pink slip that nearly cost him his UFC job, and Beltran still is skating on thin ice after a positive test for nandrolone and, before that, a 1-3 skid. It seems like it could be either a slugfest, or a real snoozer. Let’s hope for the former.

6) Does Rousimar have weight to lose? There was a time not too long ago when Rousimar Palhares (14-5 MMA, 7-4 UFC) breathed new life into the middleweight division as one of a dying breed of fighters: specialists. He didn’t have much for us in the departments of kickboxing and dirty boxing, but man, he could tear your limb off. He terrorized opponents – that is, until they got hip to his threat. Now at welterweight after back-to-back losses at 185, Palhares attempts to reinvent himself as a lighter fighter against Mike Pierce (17-5 MMA, 9-3 UFC). Let’s see whether newfound speed can counterbalance predictability.

7) Can Pierce win some respect? An injury scratch put Mike Pierce on the event’s main card opposite Palhares, and that’s all well and good. But the fact of the matter is that he was booked for yet another preliminary card, and after four straight wins and two knockouts, what do you need to win notice? It appears time – Pierce’s early octagon career won him a rep as a brutally boring fighter. You can bet the Oregon native will try to shed that scarlet letter against the submission specialist. The question is whether he’ll be too distracted protecting his knees to uncork his fists.

8) Can Dillashaw tie Barao’s record? You know him as one of a quartet of successful fighters from Team Alpha Male that includes Joseph Benavidez, Chad Mendes and Urijah Faber. Dillashaw, a vet of “The Ultimate Fighter 14,” is also poised to brush shoulders with a champion. Since his loss in the finals of the reality show, he’s dropped to bantamweight and rattled off no less than four wins. If successful against Rafael Assuncao, he could catch up to the record interim champ Renan Barao‘s record of five straight UFC wins at 135 pounds – a record the champ extended to six with a KO of Eddie Wineland. Dillashaw (8-1 MMA, 4-1 UFC), who fights Rafael Assuncao (20-4 MMA, 4-1 UFC), isn’t there in terms of quality of opposition, but he’s someone to watch.

9) Which prospect will deliver? Alan Patrick (10-0 MMA, 0-0 UFC) is 10-0 and a regional champ in Brazil. Garett Whiteley (7-0 MMA, 0-0 UFC) is 7-0 with six first-round finishes on his pro ledger. So they’ve been built up on their respective circuits – that much is clear. Who is ready to compete in one of the UFC’s toughest divisions?

10) Will Sao Paulo draw better? If you were paying attention to the UFC’s last trip to Brazil, the show wasn’t very well attended. That’s not what you’d expect from the country’s rep as an MMA-crazed landscape, and it was a persistent topic of conversation. Is the region of Barueri a better market for the UFC? Is the promotion already running too many shows in Brazil? Check the stands on Wednesday.

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